If you want to get rich online, you’re going to need to scale your business at some stage. Scaling a business is the process of stepping up operations to take on more customers, more business, more assets and more staff. It is generally a slow, organically fueled process, with online businesses reinvesting profit earned in buying more websites or developing new, more expensive products, although this isn’t always the case, and with some businesses scale is required to even get things off the ground, such as social networking sites and business services like affiliate platforms.Before you can think about scaling your business, though, there are certain fundamental aspects of groundwork that must be fulfilled, to ensure you can handle expansion and can meet your obligations as they become more intense. The first thing to prepare when considering expansion is the operations side of your business. Fairly obviously, before increasing the number of customers you see or the amount of traffic to your online publishing network, you need to make sure you’re confident in your ability to execute on your promises, and you have enough man hours available to fulfill demand. For some this may mean taking on staff, while for others hiring extra freelance help may suffice. Either way, it’s crucial to make sure you’re in a position to handle demand, to avoid disappointing customers and damaging your reputation.Next, and equally as important, you need to scale your back-end support services. That includes marketing, payroll, accounting, legal, admin – all the things that take up much of your time as an online business owner that you don’t directly get paid for. Your back-end needs to be running as smoothly as can be before you consider expanding, and you might like to think about outsourcing certain aspects of these processes to other businesses to provide greater specialisation and to take the burden off your hands. Getting rid of this work load during a period of expansion is a great tip, and it’s money well spent if it allows you to concentrate on the growth of the business and the development of further expansion plans.Scaling any business, online or otherwise, requires some degree of preparation to ensure the groundwork is solid, and to avoid running into more serious problems when sales begin to increase. Building a business on weak foundations is a recipe for disaster, and it’s far easier to resolve business problems when you’re small than later down the line. By ensuring that both the delivery side and the administrative side are well organised and ready for expansion, you can give your business a better chance of survival and success through the difficult growth period.